Toyota Desert International Triathlon - TriathlonOther

This was a pretty good swim for me. As usual, my calves cramped up pretty bad in the water. I used to think this was because of the cold and that if I wore a wetsuit, I wouldn't cramp. I now think that it is because of the cold and it doesn't matter if I am wearing a wetsuit. The cramping did prevent the use of my legs during the second half of the swim, even to kick enough to keep my legs up. But still, my overall time was better than I usually achieve in the pool (where I have no cramping issues).

I haven't used a wetsuit very often and forgot about oiling yourself off in order to facilitate wetsuit removal. So it was a pain to get it off.

Spray Pam or use Body Glide of something. Also, I would have covered up my stuff better and with plastic to keep it all dry for when the downpours started.

It rained fairly hard and steadily during the bike. It took the first loop to get warmed up. I don't know the pace figures for each loop, but I am quite sure the second was probably quite a bit better than the first.

All of that being said, I have never maintained a 16mph pace in a race before and I know that the course was flat and that helped my pace, I also know that it was cold and rainy and windy at times (not often). My overall goal was to keep my cadence at 90 or above and my pace at 25 kph (I wish I could figure out how to change my cycling computer from kilometers to miles) and I pretty much achieved it.

Not sure how my rank could be 538 when there were only 491 people in the race.

Train more in wet and cold conditions. That was a joke. What I should have done differently was skip the race.

By this time I was so cold that my fingers weren't working all that well. It was a struggle to unlatch my bike shoes. Fortunately, the only dry thing I had were my socks which were stuffed into my running shoes. Not that they stayed dry very long, but I did at least get to put on dry socks.

Not sure how I could have improved it. Lots of people were just as cold as I was and did T2 faster, but I don't know their secret.

My feet were numb for the first half. I was just too cold and miserable to be able to pick up the speed.

Train more in cold and rain. Ha ha.

Packing up my soggy stuff as quickly as my non-functioning fingers would allow, which was not fast, and getting in my car and turning on the heater to blast.


The rain and cold. Of course, more training never hurts.


For as miserable as the conditions were, overall, it was a pretty good race (time-wise) for me. Go figure. Maybe all that training actually helped.